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Designer Jonas Samson has gone and fused lighting, wallpaper, and animation to create light emitting wallpaper. In the day time it’s just like any wall. But when it gets dark – all sorts of graphics light up on the wall and animate across it.

Jonas also designed the ECCO LUCE which is a personalized light wall using LED lights – displayed at the Schiphol Trainstation.

Fusing lights with technology, reintroducing fiber optics, using motion sensors and color changing LEDs, are a few of the modern lighting ideas we can see around today. Here we have highlighted some of the best ideas and styles we have found.

Fiber optics are making their way back into different lighting fixtures. Here is a post on the Laluna – Fiber Optic Pendant Light – we have also highlighted a home theater ceiling that uses fiber optics to create a sky of constellations – L&L Design Guide: DIY Lighting Ideas and Projects. People are experimenting with fiber optics and putting them into concrete slabs for kitchen countertops, bar counters, or even walls.

The Natural Way

Bringing as much natural lighting into a home is a good choice for lighting design – all the while managing privacy and heat. Our post here explains a number of ideas around this: L&L Design Guide: Different Ways to Add Natural Lighting in Homes – From Windows to Solar Tubes. One of the ideas we talked about was the invention of solar tubes. These tubes are fitted into the roof and bring light down into the top floor of the house. They are ideal for hallways and walk in closets. They can also have lights fitted around the tube, so at night they can still be used.

Modern mood lights have been redesigned to include remote controls and LED lights. These days they have touch sensitive controls, and hundreds of thousands of colors to choose from. They can be set to one color, or set to cycle through the colors. So if it is gray and cold outside, splash the walls with green or yellow light. Or use deep blue or purple light to set a romantic setting. Choices in lights include ones like the Yantouch Jellyfish and the Philips Mood Lighting Collection which are stand alone units. Or there are special LED light bulbs that will screw into any normal light socket (in the ceiling or in a lamp) and can be controlled via remote.

Links to other posts on ideas for modern lighting here on Lights and Lights:

Here is a collection of the top cool lighting fixtures that we have featured here on Lights and Lights:

The Solar Eclipse Light

The Nissyoku lamp takes its inspiration from solar eclipses. The magic behind the lamp comes from the side panels which are held to the middle part by magnets. These side panels can be adjusted to angle the light, and also adjust the brightness – The Magical Nissyoku Mood Lamp.

The Magnetic Crystal Light

In the world of magnetic lamps, there are a lot of cool lighting fixtures. Here is just one example from our L&L Look Book: The World Of Floating Magnetic Lamp Designs post. The Crystal Light is an 8 piece lamp that you can take apart and rearrange. The magnets inside the blocks conduct the electricity around the blocks from the base unit – so there are no wires connecting all the lights together.

From Italy we now go to Brazil to see the Batucada lighting collection. “Batucada stands for a percussion rhythm of Brazilian carnival parties, where many instruments are made of cans or tin pots.” – Brunno Jahara. Each piece is a one of a kind as they are hand hammered – Sleek Brazilian Design: A Modern Designer Desk Lamp.

Sara Bergano, in collaboration with Giusy Arciresi, made a flexible strip of lighting out of scrap felt, an old phone battery charger and an array of 50 LED lights. Because it is flexible it can be formed into any shape to create different organic forming lights fixtures. The light was made for an exhibition to spread the importance of reusing scrap materials – site.

Studio mischer‘traxler have gone and completely redesigned standard lamps to use florescent light strips. There is something so playful about these lights, like they could be a part of a Pixar movie. The concept around the Relumine lights is based around the idea that normal incandescent light bulbs, the ones you would normally fit into lamps, are not as energy inefficient as florescent lights. So they went out to redesign and recycle lamps to use florescent lights.

These are some beautiful lights that are made out of recycled Tetra Brik boxes – which are mostly discarded drink cartons. The cartons are cut into strips and two shapes are made that can fit together to create a light shade. No glue is needed.

The two shapes (a polygon and a hexagon) are just the basic building blocks. With the two shapes you can build a range of different lights: from a spherical lamp, to a drum light or floor lamp. You can find the steps that Ed Chew, a Malaysian designer, took at his website here.

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This is a place where I gather ideas on all things lighting (I’m a wannabe property developer). Lights & Lights also has design guide articles writen by industry experts: our most popular topics are Home, Outdoor, and Wedding Lighting Ideas.